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Laughs and extras abound in 'Robot Chicken's Star Wars: Episode II'

Apparently, George Lucas wants to beat his legendary franchise, Star Wars, into the ground. Proof of this is his need to do an animated series ("Clone Wars") to further expand on the mythology of the series. Can we benefit at all from Lucas' desire to squeeze blood from that turnip? Sure we can! Enter "Robot Chicken, Star Wars: Episode II."

If you're at all familiar with Robot Chicken, you know that they can often take many of the sacred cows from popular culture and put them through the ringer. Star Wars is no exception. They premiered an hour long, "Star Wars: Episode I" at the same time that "Family Guy" premiered their own parody of "Star Wars, Blue Harvest." What's most impressive about the show, however, is that all of it is done in stop motion animation. Arcane? Perhaps, but since the broadcast show isn't but 15 minutes long, it works and works well.

In this effort, Robot Chicken takes a bit of time to explore the seedy underbelly of Star Wars, by focusing, in many parts, on many of the supporting characters like Boba Fett and his fellow bounty hunters. They also take shots at Emperor Palpatine, Vader, Luke, Leia, Yoda and dozens of others. Even the nameless characters aren't safe.

Extras
It's discs like this that make me glad to review them. This disc has a ton of them. The gang at Robot Chicken spared no expense in going through every sketch and the planning it took to execute them all. Some of the standouts:
- Chicken Nuggets: You wanna know just how they did every sketch? Okay. This feature gives you access to a sketch by sketch video commentary. Since their approach to the parody isn't on a linear timeline, it cues you when the commentary for the sketch you're watching is available.
- The Making of RCSW II: While it's not as in depth as the title may say, this feature does give you a great overview on some of the other bonus features to come. Seth Green and co-creator Matthew Senreich are funny and really eager to dispense useful behind the scenes info.
- Animation Meeting: Okay, this is really fantastic. Seth Greene sits with the animators and goes over every page of the script, acting out every sketch, to give them a direction when working on the sketches. Really funny and very cool.
- Skywalker Ranch Premiere: Given that George Lucas gave his blessing to the Robot Chicken team to do yet another parody of the series, it seemed only appropriate that the entire production squad of RC go to Skywalker Ranch to premiere it. Great stuff on this feature as Lucas gets in on a practical joke played on one of the show's writers.
- Time Lapse: This is awesome. They take a few of the sketch artist and plant a time lapse camera on them so you can see the painstaking work they put into moving each one of the show. If you're a fan of movies of any kind, particularly animation or stop motion movies, you'll get a kick out of these.
- Production Design Video Blogs: Just like the name says, various Robot Chicken members step in front of the camera to deliver some musings on the creation of the show.
- Deleted Animatics: Ha. Fooled ya. There are none. But don't take my word for it; just let Seth Green tell you that. Really.
- Alternate Audio: This is another interesting little gem. They go over a couple of the sketches (Breckin Meyer's Boba Fett sketch and Billy Dee Williams' Lando Calrissian ambush in Cloud City sketch). They go over what they said and give you more samples of other things they tried to ad-lib as they worked on laying down the vocal tracks.

There are a few more things to this disc that make this a real plus for anyone who likes parodies or is a fan of Robot Chicken. This episode originally aired on Nov. 16, 2008 and might have been rerun on Adult Swim a couple of times already. But if you enjoyed the first one, you'll love this second installment. The bonus features are sometimes funnier than a few of the sketches, so if you decide to add this to your collection, you won't be sorry.